The Quran

 

The Koran(Quran), the book of Revelation of Islam, was put together in a period of almost two decades and only partly written down and later revised by two caliphs.

The Koran or Qur'an (al-qur'ān, the reading, recitation, lecture) is looked at in Islam as the holy revelation transferred by Allah.

Sura 85:21 speaks of a well-preserved heavenly table (lauḥ maḥfūẓ), which contains the Koran.

In Sura 43: 3f : It is said that to the Koran  is a 'primordial book' (Umm al-kitāb), which is directly with God. In addition, the Qur'an was said to be sent down by God in the month of Ramadan (Surah 2: 185) and in the 'night of determination' (Sura 97 Al-Quadr), although it was dictated to and by  Mohammed within two decades, who could not write....

 'The Koran can not be doubted(Sura 2: 2); He is not of human origin, but is word by word the true revelation of Allah (Sura 36: 69-70); It is not created but exists eternally in heaven. It was then taken down to the third heaven, and from there, the angel Gabriel(Jibril) took by piece, sometimes from here, sometimes from there, to reveal Mohammed'. (See Sura 43: 2-3)

Muhammad dictated his revelations above all to his adopted son, the former slave Zaid ibn Tabit. His dictations were written off many times and transferred from memory. The oldest surviving Koran fragments date from the end of the 7th century.

But Muhammad had prophetic opponents like Musaylimah, who lead in 633 AD to the battle of al-Yamana and who was killed first in the third attempt by Wahschi ibn Harb, but also 700 former companions of Muhammad, so that many oral transmitted sections of the Koran were lost.

The third caliph Osman(Uthman) rearranged the Koran in 653 and made sveveral copies of it. He ordered to burn the original Quran collections.  The Battle of the Camel (Battle of Jamal ; Battle of Bassorah) took place at Basra, Iraq on 7 November 656 after  A'isha heard about the killing of Uthman (644-656) and had went to Kufa to inform Iman Ali. This battle is now known as the First Fitna, or Muslim civil war.

Later, Caliph Abd al-Malik (who died 705) and governor Hajjaj bin Yusuf (who died 704) both rewrote the Koran and burned the other versions. The Caliph al-Walid continued to revise the Koran. The result was a book of rules for a medieval arabic social order with Allah at the top and little spirituality.


In the course of the centuries arose different types of reading of the Koran, of which the Islamic tradition later recognized seven as canonical.

"Practice the prayer from the decline of the sun to the onset of the night eclipse, and the recitation (qur'ān) of the dawn. One should be present with her."( Sure 75:16–18 ).

According to the faith of the Muslims, the Koran is the literal revelation by the angel Gabriel from Allah to Muhammad, whom the Shia lifted up to the sole prophet.  But the text of the Koran is written in a special rhyme prose. It consists of 114 Suren, which in turn consist of a different number of verses.

Besides the quotations about the holy war, the Qur'an contains many other suras which invite to religious criticism, as Sura 2: 877, Sura 2: 89, Sura 47: 4-7, Sura 5: 37, Sura 8: 12, Sura 8:

== Other relevations ==

 

The sentence 'It approves the Torah and the Zabur and the Injeel and the rest of the holy scriptures that Allah has given to mankind' (Surah al-Baqarah, Verse 89)  mocks these scriptures, which had probably not been read in Mecca and not been understood - despite from the Book Henoch....

A truly initiated biblical-kabbalistic initiate rabbi or a initiated tantrik master smile at most about Muhammad's simplified  understanding of spirituality (see Sura 2: 223; 11:13) and his transferred  (Qur'an: Al-Hadid, Surah 57:12) and learned practices like the later Hikmah.

The ritual exercises of the bektashi dervishes were secret and remember at the initiations of the roman Sol Invictus - form of Mithras, whose initiation was strictly secret.

But also Sufism had to learn a lot in the field of spiritual selfrealization, even from India, and it officially describes only a small part of spirituality.


'When all the desires that cling to the heart are loosed away from it, then the mortal becomes immortal, even here he possesses the Eternal.  He becomes the Eternal and departs into the Eternal.This bodiless and immortal Life and Light is the Brahman.

Long and narrow is the ancient Path, - I have touched it, I have found it, - the Path by which the wise, knowers of the Eternal, attaining to salvation, depart hence to the high world of Paradise.' (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, IV)


== Literature ==

 

== Weblinks ==